Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Cygnus berths to ISS

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: September 29, 2013 3:21:30 PM GMT-06:00
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Cygnus berths to ISS

Sep. 29, 2013 7:28 AM |
Orbital Sciences' Cygnus berths at ISS
A second private cargo spacecraft berthed at the International Space Station this morning, fully establishing NASA's commercial resupply fleet. / NASA-TV
A second private cargo spacecraft berthed at the International Space Station this morning, fully establishing NASA's commercial resupply fleet.
Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano steered the station's 58-foot robotic arm to snare Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Cygnus freighter at 7 a.m. Eastern as the vehicles flew 260 miles above the Indian Ocean.
"It was really, really a pleasure," he said.
"It was really everything we would have wished for today," replied Cady Coleman, an astronaut communicating with the crew from Houston. "Thank you very much to your whole crew."
Parmitano should pull the Cygnus into a docking port around 9 a.m. to complete a voyage that began with a launch 11 days ago from Virginia.
The Cygnus made what appeared to be a flawless and uneventful final approach, a week later than planned after a navigation software glitch postponed the rendezvous.
The station's six-person crew is expected to open the Cygnus hatch Monday morning to begin unloading about 1,300 pounds of food and clothing and some student science experiments.
The Cygnus was flying for the first time on a demonstration mission for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.
With the successful first flight, a second Cygnus could be called upon to fly Orbital's first resupply mission under a $1.9 billion contract in December.
Under the same demonstration program, SpaceX's Dragon capsule last year became the first privately designed and operated vehicle to visit the station, and SpaceX has completed contracted resupply missions.

Copyright © 2013 www.floridatoday.com. All rights reserved.

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Cygnus cargo ship completes rendezvous, station capture
09/29/2013 08:40 AM
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News

A commercial cargo ship making its maiden flight to the International Space Station completed a complex autonomous rendezvous early Sunday, pulling up to within about 30 feet of the lab complex and then standing by while the station's robot arm locked onto a grapple fixture.

Running a week late because of a navigation software glitch, the Cygnus supply ship, built and launched as a commercial venture by Orbital Sciences Corp., was captured by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano at 7 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the two spacecraft sailed high above the Indian Ocean.
An Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo ship reached the International Space Station early Sunday and was captured by the lab's robot arm. The successful rendezvous marked a major milestone for NASA and a program to fund development of commercial cargo carries to replace capacity lost with the space shuttle's retirement. (Credit: NASA TV)
With a successful demonstration flight, Orbital Sciences will be clear to begin executing a $1.9 billion contract to launch at least eight space station resupply missions, part of a major NASA initiative to replace cargo capacity lost with the space shuttle's retirement.

Named after the late NASA astronaut and Orbital Sciences executive G. David Low, the Cygnus supply ship is carrying about 1,500 pounds of food, clothing and other non-critical supplies.
A closeup view of the Cygnus cargo ship's hatch and berthing mechanism. (Credit: NASA TV)
"We'd like to congratulate you on a great capture today," radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from mission control in Houston. "Also like to say welcome aboard to the Orbital Sciences G. David Low ... a great human being who bravely explored and had a tremendous vision for the future of spaceflight. We're really proud to have the G. David Low aboard the ISS today. Thanks for all your good work."

"I would like, first of all, to say that I was honored to be allowed to be part of this day," Parmitano replied. "It was really, really a pleasure and it was a privilege to work with all the teams on the ground, both from Houston, of course, from Orbital and here on the station."

With Cygnus firmly latched to the end of the robot arm, Parmitano and astronaut Karen Nyberg monitored a robotic maneuver to precisely position the spacecraft for berthing at the Earth facing port of the station's forward Harmony module.

If all goes well, the crew will open hatches Monday and begin the process of unloading the spacecraft and re-packing it with trash and no-longer-needed gear. The cargo ship is expected to remain attached to the station for about a month.

The Cygnus was launched Sept. 18 atop a two-stage Orbital Sciences Antares booster that took off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island, Va., flight facility.

The flight plan called for a berthing at the space station four days later, on Sept. 22, but the rendezvous was interrupted by suspect navigation data. Orbital engineers quickly identified the problem and came up with a corrective software patch, but program managers opted to wait until after the launch and docking of a Soyuz crew ferry craft on Sept. 25.

The demonstration flight is the final milestone in a $288 million contract managed by NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services -- COTS -- program, which funded development of two commercial cargo carriers to take over U.S. space station logistics in the wake of the shuttle's retirement.

The test flight included a series of engineering exercises to verify the safe operation of the new spacecraft, to test abort procedures and to verify the crew's ability to send commands as needed. After the software patch was uplinked to correct the navigation program, Orbital completed all of the test objectives.

Orbital Sciences now joins Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as a commercial cargo carrier.

SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract to provide at least 12 cargo flights to the station for delivery of more than 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. The company completed its own test flights earlier and has now launched two operational resupply missions.

Orbital Sciences' $1.9 billion contract with NASA calls for at least eight resupply missions to deliver 20 tons of cargo. Company officials say they will be ready for their first operational mission later this year.

"It's time for us really to start having flights on a regular basis and expect that the next one will be there," space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said before the Cygnus launch. "So I'm looking at this next year, 2014, to be the year where we really settle in, where we have regular Orbital flights and regular SpaceX flights, and we actually see them within a few weeks of when we expect to have them there."

Regularly scheduled flights ultimately will allow NASA "to reduce the amount of up mass we have for logistics, which we can do if we have a consistent supply chain, and really fill these vehicles up with research. That's the big transition we have to make in the next year now that we have Orbital flying as well."
© 2011 William Harwood/CBS News
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Commercial cargo ship reaches International Space Station
Irene Klotz
By Irene Klotz
(Reuters) - An unmanned U.S. commercial cargo ship flew itself to the International Space Station on Sunday, completing the primary goal of its debut test flight before supply runs begin in December.
After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. EDT/1050 GMT as the ships sailed 260 miles above the Southern Ocean south of Africa.
Ten minutes later, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit and prepared to attach it to a berthing slip.
"That's a long time coming, looks great," radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.
Cygnus' arrival had been delayed a week - first by a software glitch and then by the higher priority docking of a Russian Soyuz capsule ferrying three new crewmembers to the $100 billion outpost, a project of 15 nations.
Orbital Sciences' new unmanned Antares rocket blasted off on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast to put Cygnus into orbit.
NASA contributed $288 million toward Antares' and Cygnus' development and awarded Orbital Sciences a $1.9 billion contract for eight station resupply missions, the first of which is targeted for December.
The U.S. space agency also provided $396 million to privately owned Space Exploration Technologies to help develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship. The firm, known as SpaceX, holds a $1.5 billion NASA contract for 12 cargo runs to the station, two of which already have been completed.
On Sunday, SpaceX was poised to test an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket. Launch from a new complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base, located just north of Lompoc on the central California coast.
(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Lompoc, California; Editing by Bill Trott)

Copyright © 2013 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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Private Cygnus Spacecraft Makes Historic 1st Rendezvous with Space Station
by Tariq Malik, Managing Editor | September 29, 2013 07:15am ET
The first commercial Cygnus spacecraft is moved into docking position by the International Space Station's robotic arm on Sept. 29, 2013 after arriving at the orbiting lab during a major test flight by spacecraft builder Orbital Sciences Corp.
Credit: NASA TV View full size image
A new commercial spacecraft built to haul cargo to the International Space Station for NASA made its debut delivery to the orbiting lab early Sunday (Sept. 29), capping a major test flight for its builder Orbital Sciences Corp., which described the space rendezvous as "epic."
The robotic Cygnus spacecraft was captured by space station astronauts using the outpost's robotic arm at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) as the two spacecraft sailed over the Indian Ocean. The orbital arrival, which occurred one week later than planned due to a software data glitch, appeared to go flawlessly.
"Houston, station, Cygnus capture complete," Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano radioed NASA's Mission Control in Houston as he latched onto the spacecraft with the station's robotic arm. [See more photos from Orbital Sciences' 1st Cygnus test flight]

The Cygnus spacecraft launched to the space station on Sept. 18 in a smooth blastoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It launched atop an Antares rocket, also built by the Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences.
"It looks great," NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg as Cygnus hovered below the space station, with the bright blue Earth as a backdrop.
Orbital officials initially aimed for Cygnus to arrive at the space station on Sunday, Sept. 22, but a data format issue between the spacecraft and orbiting lab forced the company to abort that first rendezvous attempt. Troubleshooting efforts with that glitch and the impending arrival of a new space station crew aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which launched and docked on Wednesday (Sept. 25), pushed Cygnus' arrival to today.
This close-up shows the first Cygnus commercial cargo spacecraft built by Orbital Sciences Corp. attached to the end of the robotic arm on the International Space Station after the two spacecraft met at 7 a.m. ET on Sept. 29, 2013.
Credit: NASA TV
View full size image
Despite the delay, the Cygnus spacecraft appeared to perform flawlessly during today's arrival and capture at the space station. The rendezvous is a major test flight success for Orbital Sciences, which began work on the Cygnus and Antares space vehicles in 2008 and received $288 million from NASA to jumpstart the project.
Astronaut Cady Coleman in Mission Control radioed congratulatory messages to the space station crew from NASA chief Charles Bolden and Orbital Sciences officials after Cygnus' arrival. Those messages, she said, called today's Cygnus rendezvous a "superb" and "epic" event.
How Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft service the space station. See how Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rockets works here.
Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Infographics Artist
View full size image
Sunday's test flight marked the last milestone for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, and sets the stage for Orbital's first official cargo delivery mission to the space station. Orbital has a $1.9 billion deal with NASA to provide eight cargo delivery flights using its Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rockets. The first of those deliveries could launch in December, company officials have said.
Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft is a silver pressurized cylinder 17 feet (5 meters) long built for the company by Italy's Thales Alenia Space. It is powered by an Orbital-built service module containing two solar wings for power, as well as rocket thrusters.
The spacecraft is designed to carry up to 4,409 pounds (2,000 kg), though this first test flight is packed with only 1,543 pounds (700 kilograms) of supplies and gear, Orbital officials have said. Cygnus spacecraft are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of their missions.
With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the space agency is depending on companies like Orbital Sciences to keep the International Space Station stocked with supplies. Orbital Sciences is one of two commercial spaceflight companies with billion-dollar contracts for cargo delivery.
The other firm is SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., which has a $1.9 billion contract for 12 supply missions using its Dragon space capsules and Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX has flown two of those delivery missions already, and is expected to test fly an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket later today in a launch from California. Unlike Cygnus, SpaceX's Dragon capsules are equipped with a heat shield and can return science experiments and gear to Earth from the station.
Orbital Sciences named the first Cygnus Spaceship G. David Low after a former NASA astronaut who oversaw Orbital's bids for NASA contracts, but died of cancer in 2008.
On Twitter, Orbital officials thanked the astronauts who captured Cygnus, and had a special note for Low: "... and to our great friend and colleague G. David Low...this one's for you," they wrote.
"We're very happy to have G. David Low onboard with us, and thanks to the whole team," Nyberg said.
The Cygnus spacecraft will stay linked to the space station for about 30 days, after which it will be detached and set free in mid-October to be intentionally destroyed in Earth's atmosphere. The disposable nature of Cygnus is similar to that the unmanned Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships that also service the International Space Station.

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